Good Marketing Helps to Recruit Top Talent

By Consulting Specifying Engineer Staff May 12, 2005

In the May 2005 issue of the SullivanKreiss

“Do you consider marketing and recruiting to be separate, unrelated functions?” asks Kreiss. “Many firms do, and I believe that’s a mistake that leads to missed opportunities to find new workers.”

If a firm has a good reputation in the A/E/C industry, he argues, it’s a valuable asset in landing new contracts. And it works the same way with recruiting. “Everybody would like to work for a firm that is successful and well regarded,” he writes.

Kreiss has some concrete suggestions for how a firm not only establishes its reputation, but also, how it keeps the word out there, through basic and time-tested marketing methods. Word of mouth is, of course, one of the most effective methods, he writes, but others include:

Newsletters

Trade show/conference presentations

Brochures

Professional organization memberships

Web sites

Targeted postcard mailings

Op ed articles in trade publications

Press releases

White papers

“All of these vehicles and others help to build your brand within target audiences, and can offer significant recruiting benefits,” says Kreiss. “For example, when a principal from your firm speaks at a trade show, he or she communicates with representatives of other firms who may want to work for your firm someday. Or, if you get ink in an industry publication, potential recruits will read it.”

”Your primary goal in most marketing efforts is to build new business, but boosting recruiting should be a byproduct of these efforts. There are many ways, both overt and subtle, to inject messages in marketing vehicles that will give a boost to recruiting efforts, and most of them are relatively inexpensive.”

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